Money Conversion
Money conversion depends on fairly simple mathematical equations and those of you who work in a bank or foreign currency office will fully understand this principle. I, however, seem to be eternally confused when it comes to working out how many Euros or British Pounds I will need to buy something. The conversion of one currency to another can be confusing.
It does not help matters when the exchange rate keeps changing as it does. If you go into a travel agency or bank to change some currency for your holidays, it is probable that the person behind the check out will click away on a calculator and be able to tell you almost instantly how many “whatever they ares” you will get for your dollars. I, on the other hand, have to sit there for quite some time and try the equation several times in different ways before I am happy with the result. Even then there is no guarantee that I have got it right. Money conversion is definitely an art which I have not mastered.
There is hope, however. It comes in the form of the internet and it is now possible to use a money conversion program to do the work for you. These work in the most simple of ways and require no clever skills on your part at all. All that you will have to do is enter the amount that you want to convert, choose what you want to convert it to, and there you are… straight forward and simple. Some of these wonderful gadgets are changed daily to reflect the rate of exchange and some of them only weekly, so be careful that you know which rate of exchange they are working on. (This, however, immediately muddles my brain and I am quite happy to go with an approximate figure for the majority of circumstances!)
If you are going on holiday and will be using a different currency to the one that you are used to, it may be an idea to make a small, paper money conversion chart. I know that you can get some wonderful, small and lightweight calculator style gadgets, but much of the time these are unnecessary. All you really need is a piece of paper, probably about the size of a credit card, with a list of the most commonly used amounts. For example, if you are going to Europe you could just list the conversion of 1, 2, 5, 10 euros etc. into dollars. This way you need only take a quick look to get a rough idea of the value of what you are looking at. On the same piece of paper you may like to list 1, 2, 5, 10 dollars etc. into euros. I have used a quick chart like this on holiday before and found it very useful as a rough guide. I even went to the trouble of covering mine in clear sticky plastic to make sure that it lasted the holiday!
Whichever system you use, you will find plenty of help with money conversion these days. It still remains a mystery to me, but at least there are now ways of converting your dollars without having to do the math on your fingers!
